The present invention relates to improvements made to conventional handling installations for automatically transporting loads, particularly to roller conveyors for transferring pallets, trays or other load-carrying elements from one point to another.
To clarify ideas, FIGS. 1 and 2 of the attached drawings respectively illustrate diagrammatically a roller conveyor and a pallet, both of a conventional type.
FIG. 1 shows a kind of metal carpet consisting of a succession of cylinders or rollers 1 rotating freely about their axis 2--2 and maintained in virtually tangential proximity to one another between two parallel longitudinal members 3, 4 which receive the axles of the rollers and which are themselves supported by legs 5, 6. The latter or at least some of them have orifices 7 located at different heights for receiving a roller axle, in order to allow horizontal adjustment or a more or less pronounced inclination of the rolling track R which the rollers 1 as a whole constitute for a pallet P, such as that illustrated in FIG. 2.
Where a horizontal rolling track or conveyor R is concerned, the load-carrying pallet P is propelled under the action of an initial impulse force which, if appropriate, is repeated occassionally to allow for friction. Where a rolling track R inclined in a downward direction is concerned, the difference in level between its ends could be sufficient to ensure the translation of the pallel P as a result of gravity, but if this were not sufficient, it would be possible, here too, to resort to propulsive impulses.
FIG. 3 of the attached drawings illustrates an installation of this type. At the departure station D where the rolling track R has a horizontal segment, a jack 8, which can be controlled by a computer or a coder at specific moments, applies an initial impulse to the load C carried by the pallet P; the latter, set in motion in this way, continues its path over the inclined transfer portion T of the rolling track and ends at the arrival station A, where the pallet P comes up against a stop plate 9, before being removed or transferred to the departure station D' of another rolling track R', as illustrated diagrammatically at the bottom of FIG. 3. This second departure station D' can be provided with a jack 8a similar to the jack 8 at the original departure station D.